Bass player from my band bought the Blacksmith today, for under 1000euros. Apparently the prices are getting lower and the store decided they're gonna go even lower to make the first sale in the city, since their initial price was close to 3000 euros, which is insane.
I'm also a some time bass player, guitarist, but primarily I'm a live sound engineer, that's what I make for living.
First impressions:
I really think the tone is mostly in the player, and the way he approaches the instrument, band and the music in the end, so if it works for person A, it might be totally unusable with person B.
The amp is nowhere near vintage tone. It's modern sounding off the bat. It's not sterile in any way, and it does not feel "colorless" despite being digital class D modern beater. It's a warm sounding amp.
The bass player uses four string American Jazz with Seymour Antiquity's, but had only 4 string Vintage vibe Squier with Fender American Jazz pickups today, so we had to settle for a little less interesting sounding instrument. Before Blacksmith he used VT Bass deluxe into Ashdown 8x10" and a custom 2x15". Tuning of the bass guitar is BEAD.
Tubetone pot is useful until 3/4, when it goes into fuzzy territory. A bit of a overkill and for some of the people it's the the less usable part of the tubetone control. Imagine Sansamp BDDI with gain maxed out. Tubetone pot goes beyond that and sound way fuzzier than BDDI.
Why I mention BDDI? BDDI is sort of a swiss knife. Most people are not fond if it, but I'm yet to find a band that uses it and has problems with it in band situation. It may not have stellar tone, but those things cut through the mix in a way that the bass guitar almost instantly suplements the guitar and fills out the band's sound and every single note is same power and volume.
Blacksmith has similar character. We did not tried it yet in a band situation (will in a day or two and I'll get back with results), but all the low notes, on the thickest B string, from open to 12th fret were equally strong and defined.
He misses some of the grit and "ampness" of VT Bass, because it was impossible to dial in similar tone, when the drive on VT bass is crancked for instance. But compression of notes was beyond VT bass'es capabilities.
Blacksmith cannot give distortion, but on the other hand, tone controls offer much more control of the tone. Front panel and controls are idiotproof and easy to use. He said: "I started tweaking the frequencies but in the end it's just too much stuff going on, so I went back to the basic 12 o clock setting, and just played with basic 4 tone pots." It's easy to get lost in turning too much knobs.
Compressor works good, the tweeter thing is useless for our type of music.
The tuner is super fast and works great! There's no lag between switching presets.
We tried VT bass into eff return to use just the power section and besides silly amounts of power, it did not color the tone of the VT bass at all. Sounded identical as his Crown CE1000 slave he used for driving the cabs before.
Price of this amp is going down, most european dealers cut the price, so now it's in a sane price range for most of the working bass players that need power and good tone shaping. People that dig BDDI might just like this amp. The bass player from Mastodon uses one, so you get an idea of bass audience it's intended to.
Will try with some dirt pedals to see how it copes with that, while not being able to provide distortion on it's own, a lot off bass players use Rat's, Big Muffs or some other pedals to get some grit. If it won't sound "digital" or artificial, it will turn out as a really nice amp.
